


Calyptra

by kyberking



Series: Hematophagia [2]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Gen, Memory Alteration, Nonlinear Narrative, aftermath of feeding, blood mention, platonic, vampire!Shane
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 15:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13592766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyberking/pseuds/kyberking
Summary: After Ryan finds out about Shane's "condition" in a terribly cliche way, it's time to cope, something they do remarkably poorly.





	Calyptra

**Author's Note:**

> [Calyptra - a blood drinking moth native to Japan. While it can bite humans, it's not thought to be a threat] 
> 
> While I suppose this could be read as a stand-alone, it's definitely better if you've read part one, Hematophagic, first!

Several days after the _incident_ , as Shane was calling it, he brought Ryan a morning coffee at his desk. This wasn’t really abnormal, per se, but it was like they were relearning everything. A lot of things, even normal things like conversation and gestures like getting coffee felt cautious and nervous, like learning to walk again after a paralyzing accident. It was maddening.  

-

That morning, Ryan had awoken first, half horrified to find himself bloodied but more than relieved to find Shane breathing steadily, his face having returned to its normal shade of pale instead of something like death’s caricature. Still too exhausted to even try to process what this all meant, Ryan let himself be lulled back to sleep by the warm duvet and Shane’s gentle snoring. He’d woken up again a few hours later to the sound of Shane throwing up.

He wandered into the bathroom to see the man curled on the floor, shaking. For a second, a wave of deja vu crashed over him. He’d found Shane like this last night, on the brink of death; he was worried the impromptu transfusion hadn’t worked. But Shane perked up when he heard Ryan’s bare feet shuffle on the linoleum and when he looked up, his expression was sheepish rather than sallow. But his eyes didn’t, they _couldn’t_ quite reach Ryan’s, stopping just short. That meant there was only one place for Shane’s gaze to pause, which was on Ryan’s marred neck and chest.

It looked much worse than it felt, in fact, Ryan barely registered the vague throb of his neck, it felt almost no different than the crick you get from sleeping wrong. As for his chest, well, a little blood goes a long way to horrify, even if it’s a habitual sight.

“I’m sorry,” Shane slurred before doubling over the toilet again, painting the water a dark reddish brown. He didn’t need to apologize though. Ryan knew he’d do it again, he’d do it infinitely, over and over, if it meant keeping Shane from that degree of suffering. Besides, he’d donated blood regularly enough before and now he knew there was very little difference in sensation. Part of Ryan also knew that even if it hurt, even if it wasn’t as strangely blase, he’d rather be a blood donor than a pallbearer. He knelt down beside Shane and rubbed his back in a soothing circle, pretending he didn’t notice the other man flinch.

-

“Thanks, I needed this,” Ryan mumbled into the warmth of the small paper cup before taking a long sip of the black coffee. What should have been relaxing, even if slightly bitter, tasted _foul_. The coffee was almost too thick and slid over his tongue with a strange saltiness, making him gag slightly. As it sat in his mouth the taste intensified along with his desire to gag, making him twitch with the effort of not spitting everywhere. With a mouth full of “coffee” and no trash can nearby, Ryan pulled a terrible face, forcing himself to swallow the coffee like a stone. His stomach hurt instantly.

“What did you...did you put, like, drain cleaner in this?”  he sputtered, quickly uncapping a water bottle that had been sitting on his desk for god knows how long. He chugged the warm, vaguely stale water like a champion, regarding Shane with judging eyes.

Shane just just quirked an eyebrow and turned to sit at his desk. Ryan knocked him on the arm before asking again.

“No seriously, did you? Because it tastes fuckin'  _tainted._ If you wanted to kill me, there’s easier ways, dude, and I bet it would taste better, too.” He’d been joking, but as the last few words tumbled out of his mouth he realized their weight, making a half hearted chuckle die low in his throat, coming out as a stutter. It had been like this for days now, a steady push and pull of what was alright given the news. Ryan had tried to draw an invisible line at murder jokes, or well, _being murdered_ jokes. He sighed and rubbed his forehead, watching as Shane’s face dropped just a fraction. Should he himself have been supernatural, he probably could have heard Shane’s spirit splinter.

_There’s easier ways to **kill me**. _

_It would **taste** **better** , too. _

God, what foolish words.  

-

After a while, once Shane had stopped feeling sick and Ryan had showered, they called the front desk and their supervisors to extend their trip an extra day. They said Shane got food poisoning (again) and was feeling too weak for the seven hour drive back to LA. Before they left, the crew grumbled about Shane’s inane ability to get food borne illnesses, suggesting the man adopt more discretion about what he ate. If the phrase struck a nerve, Shane didn’t let it show. They lamented the lack of “in-flight entertainment” as they called it, but still wished him well.

Once back upstairs, they ordered room service and exhaustedly curled up in bed. In separate beds. They didn’t know who was the driving force behind the effort, but they were going to terrible lengths to keep space between themselves. Shane’s guilt laden eyes never rested on Ryan for long, he always looked past him, or just over his shoulder and into the middle distance. For lack of a better euphemism, it looked like Shane had seen a ghost. After an hour’s worth of stunted half conversations and silent chewing, Shane blew a sigh out of his nose and flicked on the TV, tuning it to a rerun of Frasier. Ryan let that fly for about fifteen minutes, especially once he noticed his friend wasn’t really watching.

“Are you alright?” he asked innocently enough.

“I’m not gonna die, if that’s what you mean.” Shane shrugged, sounding glib, his head was steeled towards the old tube style TV and his eyes remained vacant even as the canned laughter rang out in the room.

“Shane, you dick, you know that’s like only half of what I meant,” Ryan couldn’t help the exasperated words from slipping out, bristling at his friend’s dismissal. The fucker had almost died in his arms last night. Hell, for the longest time he was vaguely trying to die, denying Ryan the opportunity to help. Shane, as far as Ryan was concerned, was _not_ allowed to sit here and mope over surviving. 

“What do you want me to say, Ryan? This isn’t...it’s fucking weird okay?” Shane muted the TV and rolled over to lay on his side and truly make eye contact with Ryan for the first time that day. “How the hell are you so okay with this?”

Ryan mulled over the question, chewing on the underside of his lip until he tasted blood. At the taste, his stomach jumped up into his throat as did his hand, rubbing on the quickly fading bruise just above his collarbone. He decided on his answer.

“Like you said last night, I believe in pretty much anything, and you’re weird enough that this is certainly believable, if not probable.” he tried for light hearted banter, but Shane barked out a laugh and his reply was pointed.

“You’re also _afraid_ of everything you believe in. You’re goddamn terrified of all your little ghosts and demons and ghoulies. And this, it’s not just hypotheticals and half baked EVPs. I, Ryan, I _actually_ -” Shane cut himself off, biting down on the last few words left unsaid. Ryan had a sinking feeling that those words were some combination of _attacked, hurt,_ or something else equally negative. It wasn’t true of course. Ryan had offered. He’d pleaded.

“I’m not afraid of you, Shane, that’s ridiculous.” Much like Shane hadn’t finished his sentence, Ryan left the words _“pull your head out of your ass”_  to linger in the air, completely perceptible in the way Ryan quirked an eyebrow and frowned.

“You woke up covered in blood, Ryan.”

“And you woke up alive! It’s a fair trade! And besides, I offered. You didn’t force me, you didn’t hurt me, -” Shane cut him off.

“There’s consequences to this!” he yelled, throwing his hands in the air. What kind of consequences Ryan had no idea and also no particular anxieties, so long as it meant he wasn’t like, going to die in seven days or was somehow betrothed to Shane now through arcane and ancient customs. He waited for Shane to elaborate, but the man only backpedaled. “There should be consequences. It shouldn’t be so...normal.” his voice was unbearably quiet. After a moment, Ryan spoke again.

“I forgive you, if that’s what you need to hear,” he offered. He’d offered up so much of himself that it hurt to see Shane wanting to self-flagellate to appease a twisted guilt. That same awkward silence from before settled over the room, letting Ryan focus on his heart as it beat wildly against his ribs. He wondered what the extent of Shane’s supernatural nature was. Could he hear the thudding in his chest, could he smell the way his blood flushed cold with fear or hot with anger?  He thought again of those blurry, undefined consequences. Was Shane ever tempted to hurt him? Surely not, since they’d known each other for years without even a slip or a hint of Shane’s condition until last night. But was _that_ the consequence, a newfound temptation, an inevitable craving? No, no it wasn’t going to be that, it couldn’t, right? Ryan tried to shake the thought from his head, likening the idea to Shane’s heroin paranoia. But the idea wouldn’t leave him alone and soon an adjacent question bubbled forth into his consciousness. He shattered the thickening silence.

“Did I...did it taste...good?” Ryan asked quietly, hesitantly. It was a sensitive question, loaded with subtexts and texts and just...a giant can of worms Ryan shouldn’t have opened. It was a real “dead dove: do not eat” kind of moment. But he desperately wanted to know. The question had been there in his mind since last night, before he was bitten even. His morbid curiosity had been piqued further now, with his runaway mind conjuring images of a Shane consumed by bloodlust. It was a strange point of pride, too, and perhaps tasting terrible would be a huge blow to his ego; it was something he didn’t know and he wanted to find out.

“Please don’t ask me that,” Shane whispered, rolling over and turning up the volume on the TV.

-

“Maybe it’s salt, I think I got the packets messed up.” Shane said after sipping his own coffee and grimacing. When Ryan took a good look at him, he saw some practically designer bags under his reddened eyes. _Fuck_ , how were they supposed to cope. Shane got up again with a heaving sigh, having barely settled down in the first place.

“I’m gonna go fix this, do you want me to bring you something else?”

Ryan looked down at the sludge in the cup he was somehow holding again. It beckoned like a dark pond, shimmering and tempting and he blinked away the image. It was just coffee, not some nigh incomprehensible thing. But that was where he was wrong. A week ago, salted coffee would have been a prank, a dumb prank, but a prank nonetheless, it wouldn’t have been an exhaustion fueled mistake because of a baseless, gnawing guilt. It was a chance at normalcy. Still looking down into the cup, Ryan shook his head. Shane shrugged again and started to leave.

“Hey, asshole!” Ryan called after him once he’d made it a few steps away. Shane turned around, looking confused. When Shane made eye contact with him, Ryan raised the cup in a mock cheers and downed the rest of it before throwing the paper cup at his friend, managing a much more genuine wheezy laugh after choking down the drink. “Your pranks are shitty man, step up your game!” Ryan yelled as Shane’s arm darted out to swat the crumpled paper cup out of the air.

Looking up again, he saw Shane smile meekly, but it nonetheless brightened his face. The sight almost made the taste of the coffee worth it...almost.  

-

That night when he got home, Ryan fell asleep faster than usual. In addition to being salted and burned, the coffee Shane brought him must have been decaf as well.

Once asleep, he dreamed of the hotel room in distorted greys and sickly greens. He’d had this dream before and through his limited awareness, Ryan braced himself for whatever shit his subconscious wanted to stir up. It appeared that he was starting from curtains this time, as he looked down and noticed he was still fully dressed on the bed. The clock on the bedside table was stopped and the longer he looked at it, the stronger the urge to action was. Taking a deep breath, Ryan sat up. Step one was taking off his shoes.

When he did this, the clock started ticking again and there was a mechanical groaning as the memory was kicked into motion. Shoes off, Ryan laid back down on the bed and shivered, waiting, praying for perfect playback. Not that the memory of Shane’s revelation was particularly happy or worth reliving, but he wanted straight recall as opposed to what he’d dreamed of before. Sometimes Shane just died in the bathroom, falling to the floor and splitting his head open. He died screaming as invisible hands held Ryan to the bed and made him listen. Once, after a day worrying about the “consequences” Shane was sure would tear them both limb from limb, Ryan dreamed of being viciously attacked, watching from outside his body as Shane ran at him with cold hands, red eyes and an insatiable bloodlust before tearing into his throat with a mouth made of all fangs, drinking his screams as well as his blood.

The shower squeaked on and Ryan flinched at the sound.

 _Okay,_ he sighed, soothing and bracing himself at the same time, _The shower is running, the crash comes next._

The clock kept ticking, keeping a sinister time as water circled the drain in the other room. Ryan laid on the dingy hotel bed with his ears perked for the moment Shane fell to the floor, his anxiety growing by the moment, like being on the lift hill of a particularly daunting roller coaster. But the drop never came and he was resting at the top of that hill, his feet dangling off the edge as the sound of running water squeaked off and he heard the lock on the door disengage. Shane walked out in his pyjamas with wet hair and fogged up glasses sliding down his nose.

 _This is wrong._ Ryan thought, trying to get up and failing, his chest felt heavy like he was being held down. Turning his head slightly, Ryan watched Shane sit down at the desk and pull out his laptop from an equipment bag they’d brought upstairs. Innocently, the man typed away, presumably checking emails and browsing Facebook or Twitter like he usually did on away trips. There was no sign of the suffering, sickly Shane that had really existed that night. 

 _No!_ Ryan’s mind shouted, as a strange static joined the ticking of the bedside clock. He didn’t understand what trick his mind was pulling on him. Terror welled in his throat as he ran through the possibilities. He wanted to hope that he was just so desperate for that normalcy that his brain was giving it to him in the form of a dream, but he also knew is subconscious was never this kind. It was probably buttering him up for another slaughter scene. The revelation made him weld his eyes shut, bargaining the horror of the unknown attack for the saving grace of not seeing his friend’s face contorted with a sadistic hunger.

“Ryan?” Shane’s voice cut through the static ringing in his ears. His voice was soft and sleepy, trusting. Ryan opened his eyes a peek, still half braced to see, oh, he didn’t know, maybe a blood drenched Shane and a corpse in his bed. He was ready for something terrible, for sure, but instead he was met with normal, pyjama clad Shane leaning over with his hand on the lamp drawstring.

“I asked if you were ready to go to bed?” Shane repeated himself, quirking an eyebrow as Ryan went wide eyed. The weight on his chest remained constant, holding him down even as he tried to fight it, feeling like something was about to go wrong. Against his will though, he felt himself nod. He watched as Shane pulled the string and plunged them into an impenetrable darkness.

-

Ryan awoke with a splitting headache, something bordering on a migraine, actually. The pale yellow strips of the newly risen sunshine beat behind his eyes in brutal sync with his heartbeat. Somewhere to his left, he was vaguely aware of his alarm screaming. _Okay,_ he sighed. The whisper sent a high key whistle slicing through his brain, like microphone interference. It was going to be one of those days, he thought quieter. Sliding out of bed and halfway onto the floor, he made his way to the dresser to quiet the alarm. Next came tightening the curtains. His pain addled mind made him do everything so slowly.

When he made it back to bed, he sank into the now cold sheets with all the comfort of a bed of nails. He tried to get comfortable and maybe try and remember some of his dream, whatever it might have been. But as he tried, that high squeal of interference pierced his brain, making him double over in the predawn darkness of his room. There was no way he was going to make it into work today. Bracing himself for the shine of his phone screen, Ryan slapped out blindly for the device, deciding to call in sick.

Taking a deep breath he opened his eyes and unlocked his phone, racing to type out a generic text and apology to Shane.  

_Killer migraine, gotta call out, sorry to bail today._

He watched out of one eye as the bar across the screen lazily made its way to completion. He was relieved enough to know his absence wouldn’t be a mystery that he was barely bothered by the ping that notified him that the message had sent. But before he could throw his phone across his bed, something strange caught his eye.

Ryan wondered why he’d changed Shane’s emoji to a bat instead of the normal popcorn bucket. Staring harder at his phone made the stars behind his eyes supernova, but he kept looking anyways, realizing with a start that he didn’t remember changing it at all.

  

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> hey...@shane what the fuck was in the coffee you absolute shit
> 
> if you liked it, pretty please drop me a kudos or a comment, I love reading them! :)


End file.
